John Banville - Nightspawn

‘“And the afternoon, the evening sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep … tired … or it malingers,

Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.”’

He paused, and glanced at me. His English was perfect. I watched him suspiciously.

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘“Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed …”’

He broke off, and threw down the book.

‘I don’t understand it,’ he said. ‘What crisis? What does he mean?’

Helplessly, I showed him my hands.

‘I don’t know, Yacinth.’

‘You are my teacher.’

‘But I don’t know everything.’

‘No, you don’t.’

We sat motionless, our eyes downcast, and listened to his watch ticking tensely. I was terrified. Our eyes met. Then he laughed, and turned his face away from me.

‘Tell me about Dante again,’ he said, very softly, and yet venomously, his voice loaded with derision. ‘Tell me about him and Beatrichy.’

His mispronunciation of sweet Bea’s name was, for some reason, unbearably touching, like listening to a child trying to fit his mouth around ill-learned obscenities. I began to wonder, for the first time, about the manner of his life in that strange house. Never once had he spoken to me unless in answer to a question, but a few moments ago he had offered me a revelation, and I had refused it, out of reasons that were too frightening to probe. I recalled, with extraordinary vividness, how he had stood on the landing in the grey dawn hour and bared his teeth at me.

At that moment we were, mercifully, interrupted by the sound of an engine beyond the archway. It died in a moment, and then there was the sound of a car door being slammed.

‘Julian is back,’ I said, and could not keep the disappointment out of my voice. I think I had hoped, in some insane recess of my mind, that he might get lost in the great world and never be seen again, but now there he was, crossing the courtyard, looking despicably alive, with a stupid little trilby hat pushed jauntily down on his curls. Yacinth left the room without a word, and he had not been gone for a dozen seconds when Helena came in to take his place. What a house, my god, like an amateur theatrical with all these comings and goings.

‘Hubby’s back,’ I said.

I think I must have been grinning, with my teeth bared and eyes starting from their sockets, hating someone, everyone, furious with the world. She laid a hand with maternal concern on my wrist. I snarled at her touch.

‘Ben,’ she said. ‘You must be careful. He has planned something for you, I know it.’

‘Listen, what age is he?’

She frowned.

‘Who?’

‘Never mind.’

It must have driven her crazy, the way I ruined her best scenes. I asked,

‘What plan, what are you talking about?’

She took her hand away and looked at me closely.

‘What has happened to you, Ben?’

‘Nothing, nothing, for the love of god leave me —’

There the door opened, and Julian came breezing in, all smiles, and smacking his hands. He took off his ridiculous hat and flicked it away. It settled softly on a chair.

‘Here you are, children.’

I wanted to do something to him, something violent. Rage was bubbling in my blood, a rage made unbearable because I could find no real cause of it. I would not speak for fear that my voice would choke me. Julian stood with his feet apart, hands stuck in his pockets, and surveyed us both with a merry eye. The fool, I thought, he suspects nothing.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘You both look glum. Had a nice weekend?’

Helena waved a hand toward the distant hills.

‘We went for a picnic yesterday.’

‘Oh yes? Very nice. How are the lessons going, Benjamin? Think the boy is a genius?’

‘Shit —’

‘Pardon —?’

‘It, ah, it’s going very well.’

‘Good, good.’

He drew up a chair and sat down before us, his big balls bulging in his overstuffed trousers, his hairy hands on his knees. I tried not to laugh. His trilby hat was now squashed flat under his arse. Helena fiddled with a pen on the desk. I looked through the window. Our moods had run down, like toy trains in need of winding, and we did not know what to do with each other. Had it been any other trio there in that moment of ease, they might have come to terms, resolved some tensions, offered some confessions, become friends at last; but not us. Helena was the first to drift away. She did so in stages, almost droopingly, from desk to chair (straighten a cushion), from chair to wall (straighten a picture), wall to door, to the hall, gone. Julian coughed. He was playing with a piece of paper, twisting it in his thick fingers.

‘Did I ever tell you about my mad Uncle Victor?’ he asked idly.

‘No.’

‘His passion in life was roller-skating. He bought a disused monastery in the Lake District, had the cloisters repaved with cork, and spent the rest of his life up there, gliding up and down the silent halls, dressed in a frock coat, top hat and yellow spats. A curious man. I cannot imagine why, but I’ve been thinking about him all day. Dear me. Life sometimes seems… terribly long, and the world a very grey institution, don’t you think?’

‘Yes.’

We looked down at the fountain. Julian said,

‘I think, you know, that you should leave Greece.’

He said it very casually, almost as though he were thinking of something else, and only now does his advice strike me as momentous. I asked,

‘Why?’

He did not answer, did not seem to have heard me. He glanced at the page from which Yacinth had read.

‘A bit advanced, eh?’ he murmured, and then pushed the book away and scratched his jaw.

‘Yacinth is advanced,’ I said.

‘I suppose he is. It’s strange, but I often think that I am completely lacking in … sensitivity, is that the word? No, not sensitivity, but … I don’t know … compassion, maybe? Uncle Victor taught me the value of such things, though, and I can appreciate them in others. I think you should …’

The subject dropped soundlessly down into the well of silence. I went away. Perhaps I was wrong, perhaps we did come to some kind of terms. As I was closing the door, I glanced back to see him rise and take up that flattened hat and hold it in his hands with a slow little smile of wonder and delight. Yes, Julian had his points, but I did not trust him, and I remember moving cautiously down the stairs for fear of stepping into something nasty.

The little shop stood wedged into a crevice of the little street, opposite the underground station. The books on display inside the grimy window were bleached to the bone. I pushed open the rickety door. Bing, said the bell, wagging its head. From the rear there came a rustling, as of tiny furry feet trampling old newspapers, and Rabin shuffled forward and peered at me. He was a tall gaunt ruin of a man in an ancient, shapeless black suit which bore a fine shine on the elbows and knees. His spectacles were held together at the bridge with a lump of dirty surgical tape. Doctor Hieronymous Rabin, professor of classical Greek literature, bookseller extraordinary, scholar of the ancient arts.

‘Oh, you,’ he said. ‘You are early today.’

He gave a humourless grin, displaying a horrendous set of yellow tusks.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t get away any sooner.’

A loud sniff.

‘So, busy you were, eh? How is Julian?’

‘He’s all right.’

‘And his dear wife?’

‘She’s fine, they’re both just fine. I’m giving lessons to Yacinth.’

‘That precocious child of theirs.’