Ingenious pain, Andrew Miller [little red riding hood ebook .txt] 📗

one has asked him this before. He looks at the cat gnawing daintily at the last of the fish-heads.

'Pleasure?'

Certainly there are things he likes: the knowledge in Mr CoUins's books, certain foods, the orrery. Canning's wealth. Are these things pleasure? Or did Molina mean something different, physical, a sensation? In some remote and virgin world within, he knows the answer. Pain, pleasure. He has glimpsed their coast, their high cliffs; smelt in dreams the loaded offshore breezes. But still he is

surrounded by a calm insensate sea; his ship high-sided, inviolable, its great grey pennants streaming. How could it be otherwise? It is a thought he does not entertain.

Molina is by the canvas again, working white into blue on the old dinner plate that serves him for a palette.

James asks: What is in the house by the lake? I have seen a servant go there. The twins go too.'

Molina nods, still intent upon his mixing. 'That is one of Mr Canning's most wonderful . . . things. Of course, he does not tell the world. Only his friends; the learned gentlemen.'

'You have not said what it is.'

'That is because I wish you to see it with . . .' Molina searches in the air for the word. '. . . a clean mind.'

^You will take me?'

'I will take you.'

'When?'

'Tonight.'

'What else does Mr Canning have?'

'Many things. Many. There is the boy from the moon.'

'That I do not believe.'

'There are people, James, who would not believe in a boy who feels no pain.'

What does he look like, this boy?'

'Very strange, and then, not so strange at all. Not very big or small. No horns. You shall see him too. One day.'

James studies the side of Molina's head but there is nothing to learn there. The painter is utterly absorbed. He is painting the blue of the girls' eyes and finding blue elsewhere.

The cat has finished its meal. It licks its paws, very thoughtfully.

Dusk brings an hour of light; the world flares up. There is colour, birdsong: the grass capped with silver. An hour, then clouds,

night-bearing, sweeping in over the hills, the village, the lake. The light recedes into a slender golden tower. In the house, servants hurry from room to room lighting candles. The fires are stoked, shutters barred.

James meets Molina on the back stairs. The painter winks, swings a key from his hand.

'Ready?'

They exit through a low door at the side of the house. Molina has taken a lantern from one of the servants, a feeble light but sufficient to see the next two, three footsteps. They do not talk, not until they reach the house by the lake. The house is small, a mock temple. A statue of Neptune stands beside it, pot-beUied, dyspeptic, frowning towards the lake. Molina scratches the key against the lock.

What you are going to see, James, Mr Canning found near the island of Capri. It is said the Emperor Tiberius also possessed such a one. That he used it for his pleasure.'

The lock gives. Molina opens the door, cautiously, as if whatever is'upon the other side may take fright. James follows. The stench of fish is physical in the air. The light of the lantern marbles the surface of a pool. Molina crouches by the edge of it.

'Come, my friend. It will not harm you.'

But James is not afraid, he is suspicious. He is thinking of Gummer, holding up his bottle of trash above the wide-eyed crowd. Is Molina duping him?

There is a movement, the writhe of a shadow in the bottom of the pool. James kneels beside the painter, stares down into the water.

Molina says: 'Did you see?'

James says: 'I saw nothing.'

The water is not clean. Where the light pierces it he can see particles of scum, brilliant green. Molina dips his hand into the water.

He croons like a lover: 'Venga, carina, venga! The water breaks, the light zig-zags crazily over the surface. A form is thickening, rising towards them, parting the slack muscle of the water. A shape - a head? - skims just below the skin of the pool. There is a flash of bronze, a cry, gull-Hke, forlorn, av^^ul. For an instant James sees it, outlined in the boil of its own movement; an eye, unmistakably human, unmistakably alien; a powerful blonde shoulder, a long arched back, a tail trailing black weeds and crusted with shells; the broad ragged comb of its fin. It cries out again, turns up its belly, the white and rose of its breasts, and dives, pulsing its tail, passing beyond the shallow net of their light. The water slaps against the stone edge of the pool; slowly, slowly settles.

Mohna eases himself up. He gestures to the boy to go ahead of him, out of the room, then he pulls the door shut, locks it, pockets the key. It has started to rain. The rain shows in the surface of the lake like a field of tiny white flowers. They run to the house, and as they run. Canning's dowdy marvel swims deeper into the lairs of the boy's brain, and circles there, stirring dreams, currents of unease.

January freezes. February brings a sudden thaw. The rivers lap their banks, the roads turn to mush. On the feast of St Valentine's James receives a locket of hair bound with a length of thread. Also a riddle, the spelling wildly idiosyncratic. When next he meets the twins he looks to see which of them is missing a scissor-bite of hair, but among the rings and curls, the sheer abundance, it is impossible to tell. It is from them both perhaps. If they suffered the same thoughts, why not the

same emotions? For a week he uses the lock as a bookmark, then loses it, leaving it perhaps inside a copy of De Revolutionibus, or among the pages of Mr Canning's first edition of Newton's Opticks. The girls' great day is coming. They sometimes faint at the very thought of it.

Visitors. A dozen coaches, wheels gummed with mud. Servants at