Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Terror

Hāna said nothing, resting her head, so heavy, the massy cushion of silken hair, on Ysabelle’s hand.

They gazed up at the moon, at the mask which hid the moon, which might itself in reality be a thing of darkness, concealing itself for ever from the earth.

“I’ve never seen so much hair,” said Ysabelle presently.

“Yes, it makes my head ache sometimes. I wanted to cut some of it once. But Ernst told me that was unfeminine.”

“What nonsense. Your brother’s a fool. I’m sorry. Even so, you shouldn’t – no, you should never cut your hair. Your hair isn’t like any other hair. Your hair is – you. ”

Hāna laughed.

Ysabelle in turn felt frightened. She said, “What nonsense I’m talking.” And took the girl back into the house, which Ernst was filling, as the father had done, with the headachy lustre of cigars.

They left at midnight, a city hour, not valued in the country.

Exhausted, Ysabelle went upstairs, and Mireio, hearing her pace about, nodded sagely, rightly believing her mistress was disturbed by new and awful terrors, tinglings, awakenings, amazements.

Ernst was delighted when Hāna began to spend time with Ysabelle at the white wooden house, among the cherries. She was always returned early enough to greet him, if he had been absent in the town. She made sure as ever that the servants saw to his comforts. When once or twice he slyly said to Hāna, “What do you talk about, you two women, all those hours? Daydreams, and those books of yours, I expect.” Hāna replied seriously, “Sometimes we talk about you.” “ Me ? What place can a humble male have in your games?” But he needed no answer and was gratified, not surprised, by Hāna’s lie. She had learned to be careful of him from an immature age, upbraiding him only in the proper, respectful, foolish, feminine way, desisting at once when chided. She was used to extolling his virtues, praising his achievements and being in awe of them. Even her perhaps-feigned loyalty she had learned to temper, for once, when a rival at his university had, he said, stolen a passage from his paper, and Hāna had asserted that the man should be whipped, Ernst had replied sharply that this might be so, but he did not expect her to say it. Hāna had been taught that men were not to be questioned, save by other men. For though some men were base, a woman could not grasp what drove them to it.

All this Hāna had relayed to Ysabelle, it was true. And so, in a way, they had spoken of Ernst.

“My mother died when I was four,” said Hāna, “but I had a kind nurse. I miss my mother still, do you know, I dream of her even now. She’d come in from some ball or dinner and her skirts would rustle, and she smelled of perfume and there was powder on her cheek, as on the wings of the butterflies that Ernst kills.”

“I killed my mother,” said Ysabelle. Hāna gazed, and Ysabelle added, “I mean, when I was born. Of course, as I grew, I had to take her place in many ways, for my father. For other consolations, he went to the town.”

Hāna lowered her eyes. They were a deep shadowy brown, like pools in the wood where animals stole to slake their thirst.

They walked about the countryside, the two women. They picked flowers and wild herbs, and later, mushrooms. They talked the sort of talk that Ernst would have predicted. Of memory and thought and feeling and incoherent longings. They sometimes laughed until their waists, held firm in the bones of dead whales, ached. They read books together aloud. Even, they shelled peas and chopped onions on the broad table, Mireio scolding them as if they were children. She would spoil it soon enough, saying, “Monsieur must come tomorrow or next day. This pork will just suit him.” She was ready always with her invitations to Ernst, was Mireio, and he eager to accept them. Ysabelk, he remarked to himself, has that woman very well primed. He did not mind a little connivance, though, aimed at himself. YsabeUe herself would not be too forward, and she would not anticipate, daughter of a free-thinking intellectual as she was, anything he did not want to give.

But too, she must be parched, surrounded by the local males, such swinish illiterates. How she must look forward to the sound of his step, his voice, after all that girlish twittering. And she had a lovely bosom, he had seen the white upper curves of it in her once-fashionable country evening gown, and her firm white arms. Her hair smelled of the rose-essence with which she rinsed it. And there was the smell of cherries always in the house now, somehow inciting. He would like to take a bite, there was no denying it.

“He’ll be gone – oh, two nights, three. He said, I might ask you to stay with me.”

“Did he.”

“Have I offended – I hoped – you see, when he’s not there, you’ve no idea, YsabeUe, our maid, Gittel, is so funny—”

“I prefer not to leave my house. But you’re welcome to stay with me. I’m afraid—” YsabeUe hesitated. She paled, which, in the candlelight, hardly showed, “We would have to share the bed. The other rooms aren’t properly cared for. But this bed is very large. It was my mother’s when my father – you understand. A large, ample couch. It’s strange. My servants are going away too. A visit I promised them. Gone for two nights. But we would manage, wouldn’t we?”

Hāna’s face. An angel announcing peace to all the world. “But I wouldn’t – annoy you?”

Now YsabeUe, stumbling with a familiar language, her own. “Annoy – I – enjoy your company so much.”

“I remember my mother,” Hāna said, “before she died. Late, she’d wake me. She used to give me sweets, and play with me, all sorts of silly games, how we laughed. And she’d hold me in her arms. She said, We are two little mice, my love. When the cat’s from home, the mice will dance.”

“Wine and opium. A dream of pearls. Hidden things. Clasp. Hinges. Unhinged. Open. The quiet shout, my cherry blossom. How we sat, that night. And you loosed your hair. My pearl, shut away, the hair in the locket – your little river – my river in the time of drought. The making of your sweet rain. My souvenir. A wedding train, it swept to the floor. Tread on my heart and break it. Your arms – flung up in abandon, your impatient body, waiting. You had fallen asleep, your face hidden in hair, your legs pale, ghostly in the candlelight. I drew nearer, and the candle with me, flickering, threw shadows dancing between your thighs. I grew jealous of light. I inhaled you there, breathed you in. Kissed you and kissed you again, bathed in the little rivers of you. The heat of the candle was stifling, agonising. We blew the flame away with our mouths. We embraced darkness, drank the night. Oh, Hāna. Hāna, Hāna.”

Hāna was at the door in the stillness of the hot evening. The nightingale was already singing, and the sun hung low, the sky a choked pastel blue, as in a faded painting.

On the terrace, Hāna paused.

“May I step over?”

Ysabelle laughed. She was unsettled, vivid and anxious. “Like the ghost? If I ask you in, will you haunt me?”

“No, I shall be circumspect.”

“Come in. Haunt my house.”

The rooms smelled of the absence of things. The absence of the servants, gone to their family of a hundred nieces and grandsons in the town. The absence of cooking. It was very hot, and the wooden parts of the building creaked. Ysabelle had lit a lamp in her sitting room, and another in the kitchen, and the strings of onions glowed like red metal. In a vase stood three white flowers. She poured from the bottle of wine. They drank. And Hāna came and kissed her, a fleeting little trustful kiss, at the corner of the mouth.