Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Terror

“Such fun,” said Hāna.

“Oh, my child,” said Ysabelle, and a well of sadness was filled.

“No. We’re sisters. My mother is your mother. And Ernst—”

“Ernst,” said Ysabelle, looking into her glass.

“Ernst never was born,” said Hāna. And her face was wicked, pitiless. “It was you. We two. You can be the clever one. And I’ll look after you.”

“I’m not clever.”

“Yes.”

The light was darkness. The sky a blue jewel in every narrow window. The nightingale sang a thousand and one songs, like Scheherazade, never repeating itself.

They made an omelette with fresh herbs and mushrooms, and ate two loaves of the coarse good bread. They opened another bottle, and made the coffee which had come from the town, seething it like soup, and adding cream and cognac.

They talked. Whatever do women talk of? Such non-sense. Of life and death, of the soul, of the worlds hidden behind the woods, the mountains, the sky, the ground. Of God, of- love.

“Did you never love anyone?” asked Hāna.

“No.”

“Your – father.”

“How could I love him? He simply always inexorably was, like the year, the day. An hour. An hour without end. Do you love your brother?”

“I – feel sorry for him.”

Ysabelle – laughed. A new laugh. Bitter? Stern?

“But he can do anything,” said Ysabelle.

“He – does not – see, ” said Hāna. “He breaks the stone and the fossil is there. But he sees only this. Not what it was. Its life. And medicine – experiments – he has done things with small animals – and there is a horrible man he consorts with, a sort of doctor. And the butterflies on pins. Their patterns. But not – not what they are. He doesn’t see God.”

“Do you?”

“Oh yes,” said Hāna, simply, quiet, a truthful child.

“Then what does God seem to be?”

“Everything. All things.”

“A man. A king. A lord.”

“No,” said Hāna. She smiled. “Nothing like that.”

When they went up to bed, dousing the lamps, carrying the fat white candle, their bodies moved up the stairs as if all matter had been freshly invented. Night, for example. The stars between the shutters. The cry of the fox from far away. The far shapes of the mountains on the sark. The sark. The furniture. Clothes. Bodies. Skin.

“Will you take down your hair?”

“Yes. Then I’ll plait it. There’s such a lot. I’ll tie it up close so it won’t trouble you.”

Ysabelle said, “May I watch you?”

In the candlelight Hāna, a portrait, pale as alabaster, and gems of gold in her eyes. “Oh yes. I used to watch my mother.”

In the old story, the basket issues ropes of silver, and the silver flows on. Or the silver water leaps from the rock, and never stops.

Pins came out, and combs. The two ribbons were undone. Hāna, unwinding from her head the streams of the moon. On and on. Flowing. Never stopping.

The hair poured, and fell, and fell, and hung against the floor, just curling over there. A heavenly veil.

“Oh Hāna,” said Ysabelle. “Your hair.”

“Too much.”

“No. Don’t plait it – don’t. Haven’t you ever known?”

Under the sheath of hair, so simple to undress unseen. The train of an empress, when seated, spreading in folds. Standing again, veiled in the moon, she climbs into the wide bed. But lying back, the sea of moonlight parts.

“I’m so sleepy,” says Hāna. She yawns. She starts to speak, and sleeps.

Her upturned breast. What is it like? So soft, so kind, like a white bird, sleeping. And her hollow belly, and her thighs. And the mass of her silver hair, even in her groin, thick and rich and pale as fleece. The scent of her which is thyme and lilies – and – something which lives , and is warm.

Ysabelle stands. Locked. Her clasped hands under her chin. The voiceless weeping runs down her face as hot as blood.

But where the candle falls. Is it possible that you can steal a kiss, and not wake Beauty?

“Please – forgive me—”

“But it’s so lovely. Don’t stop—”

“I can’t—”

The nightingale sings. Hāna – sings.

“I never—”

“But you must have—”

“No. What is it? Oh – so wonderful—”

“You don’t hate me—”

“I love you. Is it possible – could it happen again?”

“Yes.”

“And for you?”

“Oh, yes, for me. Touch – there. Can you tell?”

“But – it’s like the fountain in the Bible, springing forth. I used to think that must be tears. But it’s this—”

“Hāna—”

“You’re so dark. Oh I love you. I can see you in the dark. Blow out the light.”

Blow out the light . . . Put out the light . . . I kiss’d thee erelkill’d thee.

He was pleased that evidently they had had a nice time together. He liked them to get on. He questioned his sister, trying to elicit some news of what had been said – of him. Hāna hinted a little, only that. Sly thing. He could picture it, these women, and Ysabelle sighing over him, and Hāna telling foolish stories admiringly, secretively, the way women did. His university glories, his boyish foibles, his favourite toy – they had that look now, of confidences exchanged.

It was afternoon, and Ysabelle and Hāna sat in the sitting room of Ernst’s house on the slope.

They were rather stiff and upright, as Ernst was. They drank a tisane, and looked at the view, for soon he would arrive home from his fossil hunt along the edge of the mountains.

The mountains loomed here. At the white house, on such a hot day, they were more a presence of burning light in the windows. Mireio had, as she always did in summer, moved two or three pictures in glass away from the reflection – some superstition that Ysabelle had never questioned, in all her thirty-two years.

But the mountains were oppressive, in this other spot. They turned the sun off in one direction, and cast a sort of shade.

Ysabelle said softly, “If I had you alone, heaven knows what I’d do to you.”

“How startled I should be.”

“I’d nibble at you like a lettuce.”

“If only you could.”

They saw him on the path, dwarfed by distance, tiny, big and towering, sunburnt, carrying some trophy.

They turned into two whale bones, corsetted tight, dead and hard and upright.

He entered. The door slammed, and the servant girl, Gittel, ran up, noise, fluster, and then he was in the room, enormous, and he must be welcomed and begged to tell his wishes, and send to heat the kettle, the coffee must be prepared. And look,

here were the almond cakes bought especially, as he liked them, and some pâté that had been kept untouched and cool in the stone larder.

Would he sit? No. Was he tired? No. But surely, he must be tired a little, after so long an excursion? No. One saw how he watched, amused, the fuss. How strong and brave he was, to have walked so long and still be walking about, and to have broken this rock which now he put down on the table there. How astonishing. How erudite he was, to have found it. To have known where.

He spread the broken halves and showed the fossil, the little images, turned to stones, curling and perfect, ammonites, molluscs, from a sea long gone, in this afternoon of drought.

“Look here.” They clustered for the lesson. So impressed by him, gasping. “Nobody has witnessed this before,” he said.

It was true. They could not argue with him.

Later, alone a moment, she cut the apple, showed it to Hāna. “Nobody,” said Ysabelle, “has witnessed this before.”

“But, it’s only an apple. Many people—”

“Not this apple. Nobody, save you and I, have witnessed the inside of this apple, before.”