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

women fornicated in couples and in heaps. With his shirt off, the fiddler played. Some danced.

Raoul got off the horse, then pulled Anna quickly and easily down and passed her immediately over into another man’s arms, like a dancer.

Was this William? Or Tommy…

“She’s all warm.”

“She’s warm enough.”

She was on her back, (the wet bath of the grass), and the man was astride her. “Struggle a bit,” he invited her.

Like a puppet worked by God, Anna struggled a bit, and he slapped her face quite softly, and climaxed.

There were two or three more. Perhaps the same ones more than once. None of them hurt her, not even the slap had done much more than sting. It was no worse than had happened here and there, before.

In the end, there were no men, and Lily flopped down beside her. She had brought a bottle of lemonade spiky with gin. Tired children at a picnic.

“What a night,” said Lilith, satisfied.

They lay, looking up at the stars, their bodies half bared, splashed by the lusts of their masters, their own.

“Thought I’d forgotten, hadn’t, you,” said Lilith, as if this were only an ordinary evening, and some mundane place. Nearby rose gigglings and a rusty rhythmic and prolonged shrieking of female orgasm.

“Forgotten,” said Anna.

“Got that car,” said Lilith. “Run off shall uz?”

Anna shut her eyes. Raoul would not let her run. Raoul had taken command of her. She had allowed it. The world was the horse, and death up behind her, making love. (The stars were dirty, and seemed to be going out.)

“Lonun,” said Lilith throatily. “Bet as you know sumon can make me a star.”

Chapter Eight: A Nocturne; with Extended Coda

Such hot nights, that late summer, at Preguna. The open windows brought no air, only traffic sounds, and moths. But the pot of dorisa redly bloomed on and on, like an unquenchable fire.

How long had she been with him? A month, or less. The time seemed longer. Shorter.

But now she would wake up sometimes, from the heat, about three or four in the morning, before the first ephemeral cool of the predawn.

Anna would pace quietly about the room, which now also was hers, theirs. She was careful not to wake him.

Sometimes she sat in the basket-work chair, and watched him sleep. He was silent and almost entirely still. Very occasionally, he would turn on his side or back, and once he spoke distinctly to someone in a dream. She leaned close to hear if it were herself, yet couldn’t be sure.

The light was warmly silvery, and everything, except for Árpád, insubstantial. She often thought, watching him, how handsome he was, and the mark on his face so beautiful, like the colour painted on the wing of a butterfly, or across some exotic leaf.

Asleep, he hid nothing. He was lean as a white lion, naked, the sheet spilled.

At last she would lie down beside him. In the brief coolness, it was reasonable to touch, and draw near.

Now and then he woke. They amalgamated in a dislocated and surrealistic way. She did not like to press for this, because she sensed a weakness in him, a tiredness. Yet at other times of day or night he would take her now, swiftly and surely, his urgent love-making halting stammeringly only in order not to be too quick for her.

Best, he liked the dark of night – of course – their bodies and faces gliding pane on pane, invisible, only tactile.

It was one early morning, however, the light only just beginning to remember it might exist, when she began to search among his things.

She knew this was wrong. She sensed in herself some impulse, but had no idea what it was. She was curious, insatiable, eating up everything about him. And his privacy should not be attempted.

So, she did not read the letters she found in bundles under his folded garments in a drawer, nor did she pick the lock, (she could pick locks, sometimes), of the cash box he kept. Old correspondence, money – what were these?

In the end, though, behind the books stacked two or three deep in the frontless cabinet, she found a small bottle, stoppered shut and sealed, like a fine old wine.

She knew. Must have known – her search. She held the bottle to the waking window, but it was only black. How cold it felt to her.

When she had replaced it, she lay down on the bed far off from him, nervous he would feel culpability on her skin.

He was to go and see to his accountancy somewhere, and their breakfast was hurried. When he returned, it was dusk.

Anna had laid the table and put purple flowers in a bowl, left wine to cool in the basin.

They drank a little of the wine.

“I took a book from the cabinet,” she said artlessly, “and a funny little bottle fell out. It looked such an odd little bottle.”

Árpád glanced at her. Frequently he forgot to shield his face from her, but abruptly he turned now, shielding it. Against the blue-gold of the window, his profile, the left side, was chiselled and expressionless.

“Oh. Really. Did you try to open it?”

“No. Is it yours?”

“Yes, Anna.”

Anna said, “What could it be?”

“Have you heard of Pandora?”

Anna shuffled papers of memory. “She undid a bottle?”

“In a way. All the ills of the world got out. But the last thing to escape was hope.”

She went to a side table, where she had set some food. She began to slice tiny pieces of vegetables even smaller.

“Don’t worry about it, Anna.”

“Of course I will.”

“It was a long time ago that I got it. Years ago. In case I found, in the end – I couldn’t go on with it.”

“Yes.”

“It’s painless. The chemist promised me. He – showed me. The little mouse, it simply curled up quite happily in its straw, and went to sleep for ever. One need only take a small spoonful. But, I wanted to be sure.”

She cut the loaf, and seemed to stand thirty feet in the air,