Killing Violets, Tanith Lee [the two towers ebook .TXT] 📗

“And that woman from the cathedral street bought it,” said the redhead, “and the silly cow said, Ooh look, what a cunning place to put a flower. It just makes the jacket.”

Having staked a claim to the white dress, Anna began to study it, stroke it sometimes. She had modelled it twice, but it was very expensive, and cut only for the most svelte body. Women admired, but did not buy.

The white silk clung, then fell loosely below her knee to the ankle. Its low bosom described the breasts, the silk ending in two diamante straps. The back was even lower, where the diamante strands ran down to the waist, forming there a sparkling butterfly.

Anna, privately, had no notion of ever wearing the dress, except for the shows at the shop.

The last show, although Anna did not know it, was late on a thundery afternoon, the sky as low as a collapsed ceiling which seemed likely to fall down on the streets.

Anna put on the white silk dress in a cloud of powder, the sticky smells of women, their scent and clean sweat, in her nose.

Beyond the curtain, which the shop coyly put up between the models’ entrance and the waiting customers, all the velvet chairs were full. The high buzz and squeaks of female voices. The fan whirring round and round, like a spider, in the roof.

Peepy sat very upright in a coal-dark dress in the front row. Beside her was another woman, much older, with a wonderful raddled face and huge eyes, ringed in kohl. She had brassy earrings like a gypsy’s.

“Look, look,” said the girls, “it’s Peepy’s old loveress. She’s forced her way in.”

At first nothing happened. The redhead, then the blondes (including Anna), then the brunette, emerged, displayed the shop’s finery, and retreated.

The old lover – she might be seventy – sat crouched and baleful. Her mouth was stony, and her great eyes carved from ink and pain. She ceaselessly smoked; her cigarettes were brown and poked into a holder of cloudy jade. She consumed them as if she hated them and paid them out.

When Peepy got up to indicate some frill or accessory, the old lover glared at her.

Such hatred, such malevolence. Such absolute concentration.

Anna recognized a burning and devouring, awful, magnificent love.

Do I feel this – any of this – for him?

Yes – she thought – yes – and as she stepped out on the walk, now in the white silk dress, (which someone had apparently wanted to see), she raised her head like a fierce horse scenting battle. She wanted to run to him at once, to tear him open with her teeth and nails, to touch his heart, to drink his blood…

It was at this instant, as Anna was halfway along the walk, that the lover sprang from her seat. She pushed out into the space before the chairs, and turning, faced the audience of well-bred, wealthy women.

“I have seen enough. She is harlot. She is faithless. Honour – what is honour to her? We grow old. Even this one – this lily of white in her skin – she too – she too – Once I was this. I – better. But now I am nothing. Quick! To graveyard with me. Harlot! Harlot!”

Peepy had risen. The room was still as deafness, only the resonance of the maddened voice yet tolling in it like the clapper of a brazen bell.

The old lover wept. Black streamed down her face. She was the essence of a tragedy ancient as the world.

And Peepy, first white with shock, then flushed with shame, then everything forgotten, rushed to her and caught her in her arms, smothering her with kisses and cries before them all.

Anna, made drunk by their passion, and no longer noticed by anyone, went briskly back along the walk.

Even the girls took no note, and the women who sewed were crowding to the front to see.

Anna seized her bag, her clothes. She flung over herself the nearest thing, like a dust-sheet, and half ran from the shop by its back way.

It was about six o’clock.

Anna sat on the tram, clutching her bundle, wrapped in the black silk evening cloak, the white silk glimpsing under it, the silver shoes, a diamanté clip in her hair, her stockings invisibly held by white garters, and not a stitch otherwise on her.

She was glanced at.

During the carnival, she had heard, here in Preguna, they wore evening-dress, and masks, and other means of disguise and facial decoration. But Carnival was not yet.

When she reached the street like a rope, a storm had begun.

She left the tram and walked through space, the wind whipping the black cloak. Thunder tumbled like masonry from clouds of purple plaster, and dust spun.

Everything was in motion. The thunder chanted in her blood.

She could not decide which was his lodging house. How stupid. Then she saw the white curtains blowing behind a half-opened window.

Perhaps he wasn’t here. Had gone away for a year.

Anna opened the outer door, and climbed up the stairs, which now were black, or spirited by lightning. The rain began in a burst of shattered glass.

I shall never be old, thought Anna. I can’t imagine I will. Something will happen to me, before then.

This buoyed her up.

She reached the landing, and the door. She stood there.

Thunder crashed. The rain smashed. Light and shade raced over and through her. The house might collapse, and she would not have touched him.

She beat on the door insanely, calling.

It was flung open.

He was there, in shirt-sleeves. How tall he was. His eyes so luminous. The cannonade of the thunder made it seem Preguna was under siege.

“Anna…”

In the war zone of life she cried desperately: “I’ve lost everything! I stole this dress! I’m a thief! I’ve nowhere to go!”

Árpád took her hand, and led her gently in through the door, to the blown and storm-tossed room beyond.

Chapter Five: A Reasonable Attempt

The morning after she had seen the Basulte male making